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Sexual Addiction
What we
have to share is not drawn from some book, but from our own
experiences and never-ending, relentless returns to sexually
addictive, compulsive behaviors. We also draw from innumerable
outside resources which have and continue to help people like us to
more successfully manage our lives; where we make the responsible
choices to no longer play the part of the ‘victim,’ but steadily
become the ‘victor.’ The harsh reality is that daily maintenance
will remain a daily choice for anyone. God has never promised us
victory for the tomorrows , but the one in which we are living
called “today.”
Sexual
Addiction is chronically repeated types of sexual obsession,
fantasy, and ritualistically acted out behaviors which ultimately
inhibit a person from entering into true intimate relationships.
True Intimacy is lost amidst the ever-ready and rapid delivery
system of that which appeals to the one caught in the trap of
addiction.
Instead of
genuinely connecting with another living/ breathing human being, the
focus becomes a recurrent dependent relationship with a fantasy and
its accompanying sexualized “high.” Increasing risks are usually
taken in order to find personal fulfillment, often jeopardizing
one's life, health, marriage, career, spiritual condition, and other
meaningful relationships.
* The chief
signal that one is truly addicted is the amount of denial present
that there really is a problem when it is clear to anyone else that
there is.
* Rationalizing your compulsive behavior is another give-away that
you have a distinct problem.
* Blaming others for your own behavior is yet another indicator that
you really need to take a long, hard look at yourself -- along with
others who can offer their insights.
* Intimately & emotionally connecting with another person of the
opposite gender is what the sex addict is most fearful of doing. It
creates a fright and flight syndrome since the addict has
experienced so much relational pain with close relationships of the
past.
* The addict feels that it's less-messy, far quicker, and more fun
than trying relating to a real person again. It's just not worth the
time and the risk involved to once again open your heart to
potential emotional harm.
* A defensive coping mechanism controls the person into thinking
that superficial relationships are the best -- the ones in which he
can take care of a "needy person" and become their hero, or receive
their adoration or worship.
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Some other underlying factors are:
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* inability to believe anyone truly loves you
* consuming fear of really being known for fear of being rejected
* unhealed emotional wounds from the past
* tremendous apprehension of being abandoned again
* low sense of self-worth or value
* an insatiable need to control and manipulate life
* unresolved guilt and shame from past failed relationships
Things that can help restore your ability to become intimately
associated with another person are:
* Learning to trust another person's motives.
* Committing to be true to the other person.
* Opening up your inner thoughts and emotions.
* Sharing your deepest heart concerns.
Addiction depersonalizes other people, making them mere
“sex-objects” to be used at your convenience for your self
gratification, which leaves you with an eventual lack of ability to
relate to another real person intimately.
Sexual activity causes the false illusion “I am loved!” The
reasoning sounds like this:
"If you love me, you will have sex with me." If you don't have
sex with me, then you don't love me." "Since you aren't having sex
with me, I'll find love from another ready source; the centerfold,
video, pornography, etc."
There is a typical cyclical pattern (almost like a religious ritual)
in order to mindlessly fulfill the desires of our body and soul.
It's like a reflex action, well learned, and chronically acted upon
by the slightest provocation. This is called in the Bible a
"stronghold" within our lives.
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FEELING BAD ABOUT YOUR OWN SEX APPEAL???? |
Many of us feel that we can never deserve anyone's genuine and
lasting affection or attention unless we are actively employed in
doing something to deserve it. We are saying, "If he or she really
knew me, they’d never love me; but the person on this website will
never refuse me."
David Seamands,
in his profound book, “Healing Your Heart of Painful Emotions,” says
it so well:
“Somewhere in the process of growing up, the child receives
messages about himself, about God, about other people, and about
relationships. These messages can be taught or caught. They come
through what is directly done or said, or what is not done or said.
Usually it is a combination of many factors. Slowly but surely, and
quite unconsciously to the youngster, the messages come through. The
child who has received such negative messages then knows:
I
am not accepted and loved as I am. I’ve tried every way to get this
approval by being the way I am. Now I can only be accepted and loved
if I become something else and someone else.” Some very necessary
feelings never come across to him, feelings like security,
acceptance, belongingness, and value. His need to be loved and to
learn to give love is not met. Instead there develops a growing deep
anxiety, and feelings of insecurity, unworthiness, and
undesirableness. And the youngster begins to climb the long,
torturous trail of trying to become someone else.”
Self-Empowerment
Escapism into
cross-gender expression gave me a false way to feel empowered about
myself. It became a very effective way to disconnect from my sense
of myself and to avoid dealing with things. In other words, it
became a ‘drug’ for me. The thrill of the chase, the energy tied up
in rebelliousness became a most effective ‘addiction.’ It very soon
became the way to derive some sort of emotional ‘high’ ... a form of
justification to engage in a distractive and dysfunctional way in
order to “enjoy” things. Intellectually stopping the behavior is one
thing, running into the resultant depression and loss of the “high”
is quite another. From what I’ve read, it is very much like the
effects of stopping a cocaine or amphetamine addiction. It’s not fun
because you have stopped the things that “gave” you fun.
The hard part then becomes that of learning to obtain the feelings
of satisfaction and “reward” from effective behavior instead. It
really is a journey into ‘letting go, trusting God, and learning not
only that God does love you; and that you must also learn to love
yourself in a positive way.
Interestingly,
one thing I gleaned from materials on sexual addiction is that in
the course of sexual addiction, there very much is a brain-chemistry
action going on. Sexually related arousal and stimulation activates
a certain type of neurochemical response in the brain, the same
circuits that are activated by cocaine!
So with that
in mind, sexually-related behavior generates a very similar
‘pleasure-feedback’ that cocaine generates. The problem is that
after a while, the brain attempts to rebalance itself, and to
continue to feel that “high”... making increasing the sexual
behavior a necessary event. We who seek SRS are chasing a “chemical
high.” In many cases post-surgically the sexual response does
change; there can be a heightened response but there can also be the
chance that the sexual response becomes permanently eliminated. The
outcome? We then become dissatisfied with our bodies because they
can no longer generate the addictive thrill – in order to meet that
increasing need, some resorting to physical ‘solutions.’
I have heard
it said that sex is between the legs and gender is between the ears.
Which makes a lot of sense. Because when you are chasing a fantasy
between your ears, eventually you want to change what’s between your
legs in order to continue fueling the fantasy. One thing I
discovered in the medical treatment of my intense depressive
after-effects is that the anti-depressants used lifted m y
depressive darkness and also reduced my sexual response. At first I
was very frustrated. Then as the medications worked upon the
depressive symptoms, I noticed that my focus began to change from
deriving pleasure in other things such as people, life, and church.
I am not out of the woods by any stretch – right now I “need” the
anti-depressants and mood boosters. Ironically, what is helping is
a combination of meds that lift the mood and also raise the feeling
of ‘well-being’ .... but it is also giving me a way to feel better
about life as well as myself that doesn’t involve chasing a profound
mental fantasy within my own head. It might be helpful for those
seeking escape from alternative gender expressions and lifestyles to
explore the option of treating it medically as a substance addiction
– there are meds and treatments that can be effective and supportive
... (used by permission from Brent.)
It’s not too late
to solicit help from a local sex-addiction support group, or any
number of other opportunities to seek and receive the help you need
to recover your many losses. Doing it just by yourself will never
work. If it did, you’d be in a far better place than you presently
find yourself. Reach outside of your vows and promises...and make
that contact today with someone who can relate and help you out of
your otherwise impossible situation.
Many of us felt
inadequate, unworthy, alone, and afraid. Our insides never seemed to
match what we saw on the outside of others.
Early on we came to feel disconnected – from our parents, from
peers, from ourselves. We tuned out with fantasy and masturbation.
We plugged in by drinking in the pictures, the images, and pursuing
the objects of our lust-filled fantasies. We lusted and wanted to be
lusted after.
We became true addicts:
* sex with ourselves/pornography
* promiscuous behaviors
* maintaining sexual secrets
* adultery in fact or in fiction
* dependency relationships
* homosexuality
* transsexuality
* and more and more and more stimulating fantasies.
We got it through the eyes.
We bought it.
We sold it.
We traded it
We gave it away.
We were addicted to the intrigue, the tease, the forbidden. The only
way we knew to be free of it ... was to do it!
We cried with outstretched arms, “please connect with me and make me
whole!”
Lusting after bigger and bigger fixes, and finally the biggest FIX
of all, we gave away our powers to others.
This produced guilt, self-hatred, remorse, emptiness, and pain; and
we were ever driven inward, away from reality, away from true love,
lost inside of ourselves.
Our habit made true intimacy impossible. We could never know real
union or intimacy in union with another, because we were addicted to
the unreal, the fantasy. We went for the “chemistry,” the connection
that had the magic because it bypassed true intimacy and true union.
Fantasy corrupted the real; lust killed love.
First addicts, the love-cripples. We took from others to fill up
what was lacking in ourselves. Conning ourselves time and again that
the “next one” would save us, we were really losing our lives.
In the solution, by surrendering again and again to the disciplines
of meeting with each other, people, without knowing it, through the
honest revelation of their own lives, confront us with our sin and
disease as it really is. Our cry, “Connect with me!” becomes,
“Confront me with myself, the self I’m running from, in a way that I
can accept. And the healing begins.
(adapted from Sexaholics Anonymous, PO Box 300, Simi Valley, CA.,
93062)
Sexual addiction is very real. It has somehow infected your life,
your integrity, your hope, your dreams of a fulfilled life and happy
marriage; perhaps your very survival.
You have formed a well-practiced habitual and compulsive drive that
has the power to place everything you love in jeopardy. The endless
routine has created a physiologically dependent relationship upon
the habit-forming substance within your own body, called endorphin
or adrenaline, which has the toxic strength of street-cocaine. These
self-manufactured drugs race through your system with incredibly
powerful demands for satisfaction, no matter the cost.
"I'M A
SEX JUNKIE!"
So, you have
become a “sex junky.” No matter what you have previously done to
bring this under control, you find the problem escalating and
intensifying. You have sought help, but there just doesn’t seem to
be a real solution, until, hopefully ... now.
Until now, you
have attempted to meet your basic love-needs apart from what is
legal, morally right, and within God’s plan for you. You have become
disappointed and independent from God, feeling that there is no hope
for real change; and up until now you have basically found organized
religion a huge failure to adequately address or solve your problem.
In fact, you have been aghast at the sexual sins of supposed
Christian leaders, thinking that this problem infects everyone ...
which leads us to reason, “I’m at least not as bad as that
hypocrite!”
My paraphrase of Proverbs 23:29
“Who has
internal pain that will not go away?
Who has secret sorrow.
Who has a bruised soul?
Those who repeatedly linger at the porn site, or flesh pots of the
city & Internet.
Do not consume the false image of the centerfold, as she/he flirts
and invites you in.
Her/His venom bites like a snake and poisons you like a viper.
Your fantasies will imagine what is not real.
You will become like one hopelessly adrift on the high seas, lying
on top of the rigging, saying,
“She lured me, but I’m not hurt!” “Her beauty betrayed me, but I
don’t feel the pain!” "When I wake up I will be safely on shore.”
PORNOGRAPHY
ADULTERY
ROMANCE NOVELS/SOAPS
AFFAIRS
CROSS-DRESSING
SINGLES DATING CHAT ROOMS
We are really just trying to make life
work to our favor. But we are doing it in all the wrong ways,
especially when supplanting the real with a fantasy. We have learned
to meet our own needs apart from the tedious and seemingly very
restrictive code of conduct found in the Bible and recovery
literature.
What we call our “addiction” IS NOT
just the ‘bad behavior,’ but the lies we have believed and embraced
about ourselves ... and our perceived needs; all of which then
create methods of treating our “problem” by better performance;
while avoiding the real cause:
As
long as we believe wrongly about ourselves and others, we will
produce wrong behaviors. It’s as simple and complex as that.
Why are we so glad you are reading this? Because we know that when
you stop trying to “be good” and stop trying “to do life in your own
way,” you will then discover who you really are and what really
works to restore from within, not just some other program, book, or
method. It’s all about properly relating with yourself, others and
God; not another restrictive set of rules.
The most basic truth we have come to understand is that whatever we
believe about ourselves is what we will naturally do in order to
find meaning, purpose, or escape – and certain bondage.
Developing a self-view that is contrary to your long-held personal
self-view requires lots of courage, hard work, not to mention ...
FAITH. Your addiction is really a substitute means to find
fulfillment and relief from the everyday routines and incessant lies
about yourself and others.
Instead of seeking emotional closeness to your Creator, you have
turned to the flesh and its solutions. Result? Pain, loss,
rejection, shame, remorse, and hopelessness.
TRUE
INTIMACY: “In-To-Me-See”...
Addiction is
nothing more than a counterfeit for true intimacy with ourselves,
one another, and our Creator. It is what scares us the most, because
if people really knew me, they’d freak out, we think. Or, if she
really knew what’s in my heart, she’d run as far from me as she
could.” So, we have turned to the false image in order to escape the
remotest of possibilities of being rejected, or intimate with
another real and living human being.
Dr. Harry
Schaumburg’s book, "False Intimacy", is very helpful in better
understanding this defect in human relating.
Oswald Chambers says that satan’s counterfeit for the fullness of
the Holy Spirit is either drunkenness, or its counterpart, our
sexual experience. “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to
debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Eph
5:18).
Augustine couldn’t have said it better:
“Thou hast made us for Thyself...and our hearts are restless
until they find their all in Thee.”
Henri Nouwens’, “The Return of the Prodigal Son”, captures the
essence of our dilemma, saying:
“As
long as I keep looking for my true self in the world of conditional
love, I remain ‘hooked on the world’ - trying, failing and trying
again. It’s a world that fosters addictions because what it offers
cannot satisfy the deepest craving of my heart ...our addictions
make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to
self-fulfillment ... these addictions create expectations that
cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. As long as we live
within the world’s delusions, our addictions condemn us to face an
endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains
unfulfilled. In these days of increasing addictions, we have
wandered far away from our Father’s home. The addicted life can
aptly be called a life lived in a ‘distant country.’ I am the
prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it
cannot be found. Why do I keep leaving home where I am called a
child of God, the beloved of my Father?”
FOR WOMEN/ WIVES:
* Living with Your Husband’s Secret Wars - Marsha Means
* Playing It By Heart - Melody Beattie
* CoDependent No More - Melody Beattie
* Boundaries - Cloud & Townsend
* An Affair of the Mind - Laurie Hall
* Sexual Adultery - Stephen Gallagher
* Bold Love - Dan Allendar
* The Cleavers Don’t Live Here Anymore - Laurie Hall
* From Bondage to Bonding - Nancy Groom
FOR MEN:
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An Affair of the Mind - Laurie Hall
* Men’s Secret Wars - Patrick Means
* Sexual Idolatry - Stephen Gallagher
* Faithful & True - Mark Laaser
* Don’t Call it Love - Patrick Carnes
* Out of the Shadows - Patrick Carnes
* Addicted to Love - Stephen Gallagher
* Breaking Free - Russell Willingham
* Centerfold Syndrome - Gary Brooks
* False Intimacy - Harry Schaumburg
* Every Man’s Battle - Arterburn
* Healing Life’s Hidden Addictions - Archibald Hart
* Healing the Masculine Soul - Mark Dalbey
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